The title Entropvisions is in homage to my mother, the poet and art critic, Harriet Zinnes. In 1990 New Directions published a collection of her poems titled Entropisms, a word she made-up combining entropy - the tendency toward disorder - and tropism - the growth towards or away from a stimulus. Similarly, my short reviews combine entropy and tropism by suggesting growth towards a vision of art from the chaos of the art world. Through the back door, my title also pays homage to my physicist father, Irving Zinnes, whose long discussions with my mom got her thinking about entropy and tropism in the first place.
That Peter Acheson’s art vacillates between mixed-media collages of contrasting – actually conflicting – materials, painterly paintings of lush color suggesting landscape, figures or straight abstraction, asemic mark-making and sculptural installation, makes his art difficult to classify. Perhaps it is just this unpredictability that defines his art, but the current show, sponsored by Teffia, and viewable at a pop-up space in Kingston (51 Maiden Lane) suggests deeper, unifying investigations are actually at play. Much as incongruous materials appear in one artwork, the opposing approaches in this show, including work from the 1980s through 2026, collectively create one large piece, as if each artwork points to the many layers of questions that holistically are this exhibition. Who are we? Where are we going? Are we the clarity of a simple shape, the ambiguity of discordant forms? Are we the stewards of our natural world, the victims of its powers, or the ship-of-fools destroyers of its generous offerings? Throughout the show hovers a sense of mortality, vulnerability, constant change, and a feeling of time morphing one substance into another, suggesting that, despite how powerful we might think we are, we can never know ourselves or control our lives. Can we ever comprehend Einstein’s relationship between time and space, the clash between our inner experience and the external world, or simply what it is to feel our mortality as we try to live our lives? Despite these large questions, Peter’s small-scale art has humility, a refusal to join the pompous art-world jargon and AbEx tortured angst, and, with his loving homages to artist heroes – for instance Giacometti and A. R. Penck -- and with his obvious love of paint and materials, Acheson seems to say that through art we might find a footing, a center, a way to find belief through it all. The gallery is open on Sat. and Sun. from 12-6pm, and Peter will give an artist talk on June 20 at 3pm. Archive & all photos: @entropvisions and www.AliceZinnes.com
@acheson.peter @teffia.primary @past.the.sun